50 States of Literature: Down in Louisiana

Rebecca Well’s Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood follows Vivi, Necie, Teensy, and Caro, who, despite being 60 years old, are still causing trouble in Pecan Grove, Louisiana. After an interview with Vivi’s daughter Siddaleethat portrays Vivi as a “tap dancing child abuser,” her friends persuade the infuriated matriarch to send Siddalee “The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood,” a scrapbook filled with girlhood mementos that chronicle the Ya-Yas as they grow and love. As Siddalee pores over the book and re-lives both Vivi’s teenage years and her own tumultuous childhood, she struggles to accept that love is imperfect and that forgiveness must often override understanding. Louisiana, the “bayou world of Catholic saints and voodoo queens,” has the unique double heritage of both Cajun and Dixie roots. The lifeblood of these women is that of well-bred “gentility,” and they are sometimes ruled by impulsivity and a fun-loving thirst for life, raising Cain even as they raise children. Amidst gumbo dinners and heavy air-conditioning, night-blooming jasmine and tangled Spanish moss, they dream “soft seersucker dreams, drugged happy with the heat,” while Siddalee sees “the Holy Lady [Mary], with strong muscles and a merciful heart,” cradled in the crescent moon. Strength and tenderness, devotion and tumult—these are at the essence of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood, and of the heritage its women embody.